I couldn’t not make a comparison with the well-funded change-the-flag roadshow. It really is about what those in power want discussed

Chin up, just yesterday the leader of the opposition proposed building a new anthem for use with the 35,000 capacity covered stadium. It’s understood that both will be completed in time for the British and Irish Lions tour in 2017. To the upstarts who would accuse those in central Government of being out of touch …pshaw!

On a more pragmatic note, I made a submission, it was hard going but that video helped a lot Hebe.

It's concerning, reading chapter 5 of the draft plan, that the emphasisis on attracting investment and development as a good in its own right,but the aspirations of citizens for their city are ignored.

The current focus on preserving land values, concentrating ownershipinto large blocks for anchor projects and implementing acentrally-determined plan must be changed: it is this desire to executea central plan come what may that has stalled progress.

The "step change" that is required is a more flexible and responsiveattitude to planning that takes into account what residents and propertyowners want, as well as what central government thinks they ought to have.

This is why handover to the Council, the only democratic body in thecity, is so critical.

A more democratic, responsive approach is critical in meeting the goalof psycho-social recovery. International research shows that regaining asense of agency through genuine citizen participation is crucial to this.

This needs to be coupled with an emphasis on recovery of the whole city,including the suburbs and particularly the hardest hit eastern suburbs.

As an aside, it is intriguing to see the challenge of commercialdiscipline noted in the context of the convention centre and coveredstadium projects. Leaving aside their impact on urban form,international experience shows such projects rarely if ever makecommercial sense for cities but instead constitute an effective subsidyfor professional sport and the hospitality sector. Citizens need theability to choose whether the benefits to them justify this subsidy.

This is why of the options in s5.2 of the plan I support an extendedoption 3 that puts the city council in charge and includes the city as awhole in its scope.

According to Canterbury Communities' Earthquake Recovery Network spokeswoman Leanne Curtis, Cliff 'came across as trustworthy and empathetic in the weeks after the February 2011 quake.' As some may recall, Cliff's 'empathy' appeared to fail him when he presided over the shameful post-quake scapegoating of a young disabled man.

It's a master class in paternalism, yet hardly without precedent in Canterbury. In 2010, then-Environment Minister Amy Adams oversaw the sacking of democratically elected Canterbury Regional Council members, with the side effect that farms such as her family's were able to access a contentious water scheme.

After the quakes, the Government decided behind closed doors to restore the horizontal infrastructure of the city to the state it was before the quake - rather than the better, future-proofed versions city folk had been promised.

This year there's been a closed-shop granting of Fletcher Residential the right to develop prime commercial and residential land - about 20 per cent of the central city - by compulsorily acquiring much of the land for the building of expensive apartments.

Let's also not forget the Christchurch Convention Centre, which the Government seems hell-bent on building at a cost of $400 million to the taxpayer, despite hardly any locals being behind it (other than Christchurch Canterbury Tourism and the Chamber of Commerce - and Minister Nicky Wagner).

A number of people are getting very rich from the ChCh rebuild while shoddy repairs signed off by Fletchers and ECQ appear to have been the norm.

Brownlee’s aberrant Through the Looking Glass grasp of his Bizarro World allows him and his agencies to avoid any blame whatsoever, apparently!He’s rustling up support for saddling up a posse to chase the long-gone cowboys…